While it got a lot of flack, I thought the smaller contained worlds of Outer Worlds can be a better in between. Open spaces to explore and run into things accidentally, but constrained enough that the world and plot can still flourish.
You can have mysteries where progress and knowledge aren’t tied to each other. For example in Professor Layton games, there is an overarching “mystery”, but it’s a linear game you progress by solving effectively random (and mostly disconnected) puzzles.
I thought it did a good job at capturing the Star Wars feel, but yeah it feels like every open world game. Lots of fetch quests and running around in a massive world where every encounter/quest/battle feels the same as the last.
It may just be me, but most open world games suffer from trying to be too large. Although I think BOTW and TOTK are some of the weakest Zelda games, so maybe my opinions on open world games aren’t popular.
I agree with you, if equipment is just cosmetic, then at the end of the day why even bother with equipment at all? Just have cosmetics without stats and leave it at that.
I think fallout does a good job of this with having hazmat suits that help with rad, or “cool” attire that helps with bartering. The idea is that the design should complement the stats.
If that’s your kind of game, Unfinished Swan is another thats more plot based, but still has some fun puzzles. Doesn’t get mentioned as frequently so usually one people haven’t seen/played before.
So I ended up reading up on the original comics because I knew they were a bit darker than the cartoons. It seems shredder is only in volume 1 of 4. In it he’s basically a New York Yakuza boss that kills splinters master. So splinter trains the turtles to kill shredder. After that he does get resurrected once, but after that he stays dead.
Volume 2 cover a full on battle with DARPA (for experimenting on aliens and turtles), Volume 3 has a possible daughter of shredder trying to get revenge, but volume 4 retcons volume 3 and focuses on a future where aliens come to earth and the turtles can roam the streets as “aliens” (which isn’t that weird for the series as aliens first appear in volume 1).
The wording is a little weird, but it’s about Capcom finances. They make more selling games on steam than selling on the Playstation. So steam/pc is a bigger market than Playstation consoles for Capcom.
You’d probably be better served by a retro handheld. A lot of them run android so you can play android games, but the built in controllers make emulating actually enjoyable.
Major issue is that the ones cheaper than a switch struggle with 3D games.
If you have the money, steamdeck is definitely one of the best bang for buck, but it’ll probably be more expensive than a switch (unless you can find a deal on a used/refurbished one).
There is also dead cells, slay the spire, monster train, disable immortal, etc.
However, those are also all playable on switch too. Technically you can emulate the switch on android, but I think this brings up the biggest flaw in gaming on android; you’re either emulating or streaming for most good games.